INTRODUCTION xxiii

king's proclamation for asserting the right of appeal from
the decisions of the Court of Session, and was restored in
1676. He was knighted in 1681. In the same year his
father, who was then eighty-six years old, purchased the lands
of Woodhead and others in East Lothian. The conveyance is
to John Lauder of Newington in liferent, and Sir John
Lauder, his son, in fee. The lands were erected into a
barony, called Fountainhall. In 1685, he was returned as
member of Parliament for the county of Haddington, which
he represented till the Union in 1707. In 1686 his-
w ife, by whom he had a large family, died. In 1687 he
married Marion Anderson, daughter of Anderson of Balmm.
He was appointed a Lord of Session in 1689, and- a Lord of
Justiciary in 1690. He resigned the latter office in 1709,
and died in 172i. His father had been made a baronet in
l 681 by James vu. The succession under the patent was to
his son by his third marriage but in 1690, after the Revo-
l ution, a new patent was granted by William and Mary to
Sir John Lauder, senior, and his eldest son and his heirs.
The first patent was reduced in 169i, and in the same year
Fountainhall succeeded on his father's death.

The following estimate of his character in Forbes's Preface
to the Journal of the Se.p~ion (1714), a rare book, is quoted
by Mr. Laing, but is too much in point to be omitted here.
1 The publick and private character of this excellent judge
are now so well known that I need say no more of him
than that he signalized himself as a good patriot and true
Protestant in the Parliament of 1686 in defence of the
Penal Laws against Popery. This self-denyed man hath
taken no less pains to shun places that were in his offer
than some others have been at to get into preferment.
'Vitness his refusing to accept a patent in the year 1692 to
be the King's Advocate, and the resigning his place as a
Lord of Justiciary after the Union, which Her Majesty with